by H A CULLEY
It took some time for the Sumerians to react to this tactic and, by this time, they had lost a hundred or so men. The Sumerians contracted their circle so that they could have a man facing in both directions around the perimeter. However this meant that not all the baggage wagons could fit inside the defensive ring. The archers shot arrow after arrow into the pile of wounded in those wagons. The wounded screamed in panic until it was too much for some of their colleagues in the circle. Haban smiled in satisfaction as, just as he had intended, several made a hopeless dash to get to grips with the camel archers. As they ran, screaming in rage towards the camels, the archers shot them down.
By now there were less than three hundred Sumerians left alive, including the wounded in the remaining wagons still inside the defensive ring. There were gaps in the latter left by those who had broken formation in their attempt to charge the Babylonians. They couldn’t contract to seal the gaps without leaving more wagons outside.
The senior officer left alive realised that their position was hopeless so he called out, asking to discuss terms for surrender. Haban’s terms were not up for negotiation. If they surrendered then his men would selected one in ten for execution in retribution for the deaths they had inflicted. These men would be mutilated and left unburied, just as they had done to the two boys at the farmstead. The rest would to be taken back to Borsippa for sale as slaves, giving those they had slain a proper burial on route.
The Sumerian officer thought long and hard before ordering his men to throw down their spears and shields. At first some refused so Haban ordered his men to start shooting again. After a few minutes and another fifty dead and wounded, the Sumerians threw down their weapons and surrendered.
Haban chose ten soldiers to join those in the wagons as those selected to die. He didn’t want to be slowed down by wagons and the wounded on his return. Once the deed was done and the camel boy buried, he led his men back across the depression, herding near on two hundred prisoners in front of them. The journey back was uneventful, apart from one prisoner who tried to run. He hadn’t gone fifty yards before he was skewered by six arrows. Having delivered the prisoners to the slave market, he left his men at Borsippa and rode back to Babylon to report to Arishaka.
~#~
The commander of the Babylonian army lay beside Sabitum in the new bed he had ordered to celebrate their marriage. Much as he loved the twins, he had no intention of leaving it there and he was determined to leave his wife pregnant again when he went off to war. He knew that Hammurabi had every intention of conquering Sumeria and that could take some time.
He ran his fingers over her flat stomach, tickling her and making her giggle. As his hands kneaded her breasts she became more excited and her hands started to work on him too. It took five minutes before she was begging him to take her but he continued with his slow ministrations until she was moaning with pleasure and clawing at his back. Now it was time and he thrust into her slowly at first, then with increasing urgency.
Mannui-Qipi had finally died a few months ago but the new high priest of Marduk had assured him that tonight was the most propitious night for Sabitum to conceive so, as he rolled off her exhausted, he prayed that he had done enough to make that come true. Then he smiled to himself. There would just be time in the morning for another session before he had to lead the army south.
He woke just before dawn and looked at the sleeping girl beside him, wondering whether he should wake her gently with his ministrations. He had just kissed her awake and she was stretching languorously when one of the sentries knocked gently on the door of his bedchamber.
Arishaka was not best pleased, to put it mildly. He had always prided himself on treating his soldiers fairly, but this was trying his patience too far. He threw open the door and glared at the man standing there.
‘What? What is it that’s so important that can’t wait until after dawn?’ He yelled at the unfortunate messenger, who was more than a little startled at seeing his commander naked.
‘Mmmy lord.’ The man stuttered. ‘Both captains of the patrols that you sent out towards Isin and Nippur have returned and have asked to speak to you urgently.’ In fact only the one from Nippur had said it was urgent but Haban, who had returned first, had said that he might as well speak to Arishaka at the same time.
The army commander grunted grumpily and told the man that he would see them in the courtyard in five minutes, then nodded a dismissal. Five minutes later he had kissed his wife a sad farewell and threw on a robe. He knew that he wouldn’t have a chance now to spend any more intimate time with her before he left.
‘Well?’ he glared at the two captains. ‘This had better be good.’
Haban looked nervously at his fellow captain and waited for him to begin.
‘Well, Lord Arishaka, it looks as if Rim-Sim is gathering a sizeable army at Nippur. We reached the outskirts of the city without seeing anything except the gutted frontier fort on the Marad to Nippur road.’
Marat was a town of similar size to Bilbat that had grown up around an oasis midway between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. It served as a staging post between the cities in the middle of Sumeria and the Babylonian city of Kish.
‘What about Isin?’ He turned and asked Haban.
‘No sign of any large build-up of troops, lord. The raiding party we caught up with and eliminated was relatively small – five or six hundred. My suspicion is that they were a diversion.’
‘That makes sense.’ He turned to the other captain. ‘Were you able to form an opinion as to the size and composition of the army at Nippur?’
The man smiled broadly. ‘Better than that, lord, we captured a messenger on the outskirts of Nippur. He was travelling to King Rim-Sim in Larsa with a status report. Luckily for us he wanted to see his girl before he left and she lived in a village near the city which we had taken over as our base.’ With that he handed Arishaka a wax tablet wrapped in a linen cloth.
‘So Rim-Sim has given command of his northern army to one of his grandsons.’ He mused, looking at the tablet. Rim-Sim was in his late sixties and the man in question was in his twenties. ‘It looks as if he has forty thousand spearmen, two thousand archers and three hundred chariots. He paused, lost in thought for a moment, and then seemed to make his mind up. I need to talk to the king.’
He thanked the two captains, told them that they were quite correct to wake him, then went off to get dressed. Fifteen minutes later he and Sabitum, who had been adamant about coming with him, were ushered into the king’s bedchamber in the palace. Both were shaking the dust from their clothes after travelling from the army camp in a light chariot.
‘Well, brother, I hear you have some news that just couldn’t wait.’ Evidently Hammurabi appreciated being woken up in the middle of the night just as much as Arishaka did.
Adiar gave her husband a look of disapproval and smiled at the couple. ‘I’m sure that it must be urgent to drag the two of out of bed during your last night together for a while. I remember what it was like to be young and in love, even if my husband doesn’t.’
‘What, eh? Oh! I see.’ The king had the grace to blush. ‘Well, out with it. What’s the news?’ He tried to cover his embarrassment with bluster.
‘The Sumerians are gathering an army at Nippur and it looks as if their target is Kish. Before you ask, they have forty thousand spearmen, two thousand archers and three hundred chariots.’
Hammurabi’s mouth didn’t exactly drop open but he did look stunned.
‘Well, it seems your patrols have gained better intelligence than my foreign minister has managed up till now.’ He smiled at his brother. ‘How many have you managed to muster so far?’
‘Well, I’ve left Borsippa their militia, just in case that was a target, and I have only called in the militias of Kid-nun and Sippar, leaving Upi’s men in place in case of trouble with Eshnunnan.’ He looked apologetically at Adiar before continuing. ‘Luckily I also left the men of Kish in place too. So I’ve got twenty six tho
usand spearmen in total from the militia and the standing army, two thousand foot archers, eight hundred camel archers, over a thousand boy slingers and a hundred and fifty chariots. Then there’s the two hundred horsemen as well. In total a little over thirty thousand to take on over forty two thousand Sumerians.’
‘Don’t forget the eight thousand at Kish. They will even the odds somewhat, if we can coordinate our plans with them.’ The king paced up and down for a moment before Sabitum broke the silence.
‘If they are still at Nippur then they have got to get to get to Kish before they can attack it,’ the girl pointed out.
The king and his brother both frowned at this statement of the obvious, but she pushed on before either of them could say anything.
‘Well, I’ve travelled the road from Kish to Nippur once before, with my father. There’s a narrow valley where the road goes through some hills just north of Marad. If you could ambush them there you could even the odds up a bit.’ She stood looking pleased with her contribution. The other three started to smile too.
‘It would mean evacuating Marad without a fight but I think my wife has come up with a clever idea.’ Arishaka looked at his wife with pride and she grinned back.
‘Right, send a patrol back to keep an eye on the army at Nippur. I want to know the moment they start to move anywhere. In the meantime I want you to start work on a detailed plan for the ambush. I don’t just want to whittle down their numbers, I want to annihilate them as a fighting force.’
~#~
Haban sat on the hump of his camel just behind Dahaka, the boy who controlled it. The double saddle allowed him to kick Dahaka to indicate when he wanted him to turn left or right, speed up or slow down but he preferred to shout his commands. This wasn’t always possible above the din of battle, however. In any case, he and Dahaka had been together for nearly a year now and knew each other well, so the boy guessed what Haban wanted most of the time without being told.
They were waiting in a small defile with three hundred other camel archers under the overall command of Es-Nasir, who led the Babylonian chariots. Arishaka had also given him three thousand spearmen, four hundred archers and five hundred slingers. Their job was to block the southern end of the valley through which the main road passed, once the Sumerians had all entered the trap. At the other end they had built a makeshift wall of stones and dried mud ten feet high. At the rear of this Arishaka had built a platform from which his three hundred slingers and archers could fire. They were supported by another three thousand spearmen, most of whom were kept in reserve behind the wall.
Hammurabi kept watch from his vantage point on top of one of the hills which lined the steep sided valley. From here he could see all along it and some four miles across the plain to the south. The rest of the army were hiding behind rocks and just below the skyline along both sides above the road.
Haban was young to be a captain of a hundred and felt especially privileged to be in the camel archers. He had joined the army as a slinger, drafted in with so many other orphans and waifs from the streets of Borsippa. His father had been a baker but both his parents had been burned to death with his two sisters one night when the fire in the oven hadn’t been put out correctly and a spark had spat out onto a pile of dry barusti and kindling piled ready for the following day. Haban had been eleven at the time and had always felt guilty that he was the only one who had managed to escape the smoke and flames.
His father had been a good baker but never seemed to be able to save any money. So his son had been left destitute and had resorted to petty theft to stay alive. He had managed to avoid being caught, despite a couple of close shaves, until he was fourteen. He stayed away from the smarter areas of the city where the houses were built of bricks made from baked mud and stuck to the hovels made of barusti in the poorer quarter.
One day the city guard and militia had made a sweep of Borsippa, rounding up all the boys and girls who had no home to flee to. Haban had tried to hide under a pile of straw in a stable, but a grinning ostler had run to fetch two soldiers who had prodded the pile of straw with their sharp, bronze-tipped spears until Haban had leaped up in panic after a spear had missed his leg by inches.
Much to his surprise, he had enjoyed his training as a slinger and had quickly proved to be adept . He had only been wounded in battle once, when an arrow sliced across his upper arm. At the time it was extremely painful and left a long scar, but it was only a flesh wound and it quickly healed under the ministrations of the priests. When he reached the age of sixteen he had started to train as an archer and, again, he had quickly mastered the basics so that, at the age of seventeen when he officially became a man, he was selected to join the camel archers, rather than the foot archers like most of his friends.
Shooting an arrow accurately at a target from the hump of a lumbering camel was not an easy skill to acquire and it took Haban six months before he was good enough to join his hundred in the standing army. He was nervous about joining the elite unit but he needn’t have worried. His friendly, outgoing personality and his growing competence with the bow led to rapid acceptance and slowly, as he grew in confidence, his natural leadership qualities emerged.
When his captain was killed in a skirmish it was Haban who rallied his comrades and won the day. No-one was surprised, except Haban himself, when he was selected to replace the dead captain. At twenty-two he was young for the honour, but he was a popular choice. His hundred were proud of him and respected him, despite his relative youth.
That had been over a year ago and now he waited with his men and the rest of the force under the command of Es-Nasir for the enemy to appear and enter the valley. All of them realised that sealing the trap was the most hazardous task of all and they knew that they were bound to take a lot of casualties, but they were honoured to have been selected and their morale was high. That didn’t stop them from being tense as they waited and so it came as something of a relief when the signal came from the nearby hill indicating that the Sumerians were in sight. Shortly afterwards they could see the dust cloud ascending into the still, cloudless blue sky over the crest of the small hillock that hid them from view.
Samsu-Iluna watched the approaching army from the opposite side of the valley to his father, cursing the heat and swatting at the flies and insects buzzing around his head in the still air. Now twenty-one, the young man was fast becoming, with his mother, his father’s confidante: a position once occupied by his uncle, Arishaka. If the latter minded being less close to Hammurabi he was careful not to show it. In any case, he had other things to occupy his mind, like his wife and the twins. He was slightly surprised to realise that he missed his former assistant, Mutu-Namaha, and wondered how the youth was doing far away to the north in Hiritum.
Now nineteen, Mutu-Namaha had grown into a promising future commander with a good grasp of tactics. The only one of the four friends that Arishaka still saw a lot of was Uktannu, who still commanded the slingers. At eighteen it was time he was given a more senior command and Arishaka had broached the subject with him; however, the youth was very attached to his boys and had asked to stay as their captain for now.
Arishaka was interrupted in his reverie when the captain of archers standing beside him put a hand on his bare shoulder to draw his attention to a signal from the top of a nearby hill. ‘The Sumerians are close to the entrance to the valley,’ he commented unnecessarily to Arishaka’s annoyance. He could see for himself what the signal meant.
Samsu-Iluna had instigated the signal from his concealed vantage point behind a small, scraggy bush on top of the bare brown hill near the entrance to the valley. The young man watched as the column approached. He could make out the chariots six abreast leading the way but the rest of the army was lost in the huge dust cloud that they were kicking up. However, he could see that the dust, which rose vertically in the still air, stretched for three or four miles, which indicated that the whole army of over forty thousand men was on the march.
As far as he co
uld see there were no advance scouts deployed, which surprised him. If he had been the Sumerian commander he would have sent out some chariots to the front and flanks of the column to guard against a surprise attack. However, their commander must have thought twice before advancing into the valley because he sent the chariots to one side so that the foot soldiers could enter the valley first. With each thousand spearmen he could see some archers, but not too many. Of course, the Sumerians had no camel archers or horsemen. In Mesopotamia their use was a purely Babylonian tactic which others had yet to copy; mainly because of the time it took to train them and the cost involved.
After sending a signal to warn Arishaka, he settled down to wait for his father’s signal to spring the ambush. The valley was five miles long before the hills gave way to smaller hillocks and then a stone strewn plain. The wall had been built four miles along it, between two large, steep sided hills. The location had been carefully chosen so that it wasn’t in view until the enemy column rounded a bend some one hundred yards from it.
Had the Sumerians merely advanced along the valley they would have walked straight into the trap. As it was, someone in the main body had the common sense to send some spearmen and archers up the hills to secure the tops. It was fortuitous that no-one in the advance guard had seen fit to do the same but, as it was, only two thirds of the enemy had entered the valley before those sent up the hills came across the concealed Babylonians. They were quickly killed, but not before the alarm had been given and the Sumerians realised that they were walking into a trap.
~#~
Mutu-Namaha had arrived at Hiritum without incident. It wasn’t until he had to wait, kicking his heels in an outer room, before seeing Narem-Suen that he realised how much had changed in the past couple of years. He was the son of the King of Babylon whereas Narem-Suen had been the son of a disgraced and executed Elamite, and a hostage as well, before his father had pardoned him and then put him on the throne of this minor city state. He allowed himself to get worked up until he was both feeling both resentful and belligerent. He tried to calm himself down but he had only partially succeeded before the chamberlain came back and, bowing, told him that King Narem-Suen and his queen would now grant him an audience. The condescending manner with which this piece of information was imparted made the Babylonian prince even more irate.
